Hello all - Can anyone help me figure what may be wrong with this: I am still using RSD 1.5 on our one site and will be updating using RFF after the holidays.
1. I added a ssl certificate on our server no problem that is ok. I added some pages as https and changed the 301's in the .htaccess file - no problem. I also took some internal links and made them https - no problem. See 2.
2. My problem is I also have my index file as .htm ( started the site many years ago with .htm) but it is 301 redirect to index.html which works good. BUT what I would like to do for now is make the index.html with https, do I REMOVE the index.htm and delete the 301 html to htm?
The index.htm shows https right now but cannot get to work https with index.html

Sorry if this is confusing.
Ray

Not sure about this...
Would it be an option to make the redirect directly from .htm to https and index.html?
Or, some combination of canonical and redirect? Like html is canonical and then redirect?
Or canonical instead of domain.com/index.htm just let it be www.domain.com, and then redirect directly from htm?
I'm sure, if you find the right combination, it will work.

Hello Inger - Thanks for the hints.
I did try in my htaccess to change to
Redirect 301 /index.htm to https://www.***** .com/index.html BUT than I got error 500 so reverted back. Will try more that u suggested later.
Ray

Thank you for your posting Ray, I follow your postings pretty religiously. Your post seem to be more than most others referring to issues that I am interested in that are important to getting traffic to a site. After all if you have the worlds greatest site is mute if no traffic to it. Seems to me the whole purpose of a site is to get traffic, thanks again for your postings one of the few on the forum here which concerns itself with important issues of SEO.

If you are able to and have access to the htaccess file, you could just add this;



This will automatically force any page on that domain to show as https:// rather than http://

Hello GregB I appreciate what you said, as a novice it has been a long road to get the 2 sites where they are so far, I know they both can use more work and in time I hope to make them better. Some questions may be simple for many but for someone like me it is all new and not being a designer and knowing much about SEO it is confusing. BUT I have received so much HELP from so many on the CC forum, Inger, Wayan, Eric, You and I can go on and on thanks to all!!!
Now that we should user HTTPS that has been a new thing to do BUT slowly I am getting it done.
Ray

Hello Jamie, I did add this to my .htaccess file
RewriteEngine On
RewriteCond %{HTTPS} off
RewriteRule (.*) Error! Hyperlink reference not valid.} [R=301,L]

I see the one you suggest is different and will give that one a try.
One other thing after searching a article also mentioned for a 301 redirect using absolute url rather than the relative link may work better sometimes????
In other words: I have Redirect 301 /index.html https://www.mysite.com/index.htm and maybe I should make it
Redirect 301 https://www.mysite /index.htm https://www.mysite.com/index.html ???????
Should I also 301 for non www to HTPPS ???
Once again Thank you,
Ray

Personally, wherever possible I would try to avoid using 301's et al unless absolutely necessary. If you arent using it to let Google, bing etc know about a link change, IMO it is better to use my method as it is more efficient than using the typical 301 redirect (such as Redirect 301 /oldpage.html http://www.yoursite.com/newpage.html)

If you want to force www. to show as part of a path (eg show http://www.domainname.com rather than http://domainname.com) then you can use the following in your htaccess


(obviously replacing domainname.com with your specific domain.

If you were to use both this and my previous suggestion, I would suggest the following order

Thank you Jamie for the info I am going to try adding it tomorrow. Also I will look at my 301's again. By the way your business site is GREAT and the designs u made for clients are outstanding.
Ray

Jamie if you read this and get time can you please let me know:
I added what u showed but for some reason a message now says " to many 301's so stopped" or something in wording similar. But when I removed what you showed and only keep "Rewrite Engine on" it is back working. Should I have added "Rewrite Engine On" for what you showed and ALSO again at beginning of my 301 Redirect lines?
Ray